Daily Archives: 07/28/2017

Following its ratification by the necessary three-quarters of U.S. states, the 14th Amendment, guaranteeing to African Americans citizenship and all its privileges, is officially adopted into the U.S. Constitution.Two years after the Civil War, the Reconstruction Acts of 1867 divided the South into five military districts, where new state governments, based on universal manhood suffrage, were to be established. Thus began the period known as Radical Reconstruction, which saw the 14th Amendment, which had been passed by Congress in 1866, ratified in July 1868. The amendment resolved pre-Civil War questions of African American citizenship by stating that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States…are citizens of the United States and of the state in which they reside.” The amendment then reaffirmed the privileges and rights of all citizens, and granted all these citizens the “equal protection of the laws.”In the decades after its adoption, the equal protection clause was cited by a number of African American activists who argued that racial segregation denied them the equal protection of law. However, in 1896, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Plessy v. Ferguson that states could constitutionally provide segregated facilities for African Americans, so long as they were equal to those afforded white persons. The Plessy v. Ferguson decision, which announced federal toleration of the so-called “separate but equal” doctrine, was eventually used to justify segregating all public facilities, including railroad cars, restaurants, hospitals, and schools. However, “colored” facilities were never equal to their white counterparts, and African Americans suffered through decades of debilitating discrimination in the South and elsewhere. In 1954, Plessy v. Ferguson was finally struck down by the Supreme Court in its ruling in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka.history.com

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Trump just banned transgender people from serving in the military. But he’s notorious for changing his mind, and if we create a massive outcry from Americans everywhere, we might be able to reverse this terrible decision. Avaaz will work with influential individuals and groups to make this huge. Add your name to the open letter and share this widely!

Donald Trump’s latest shameful decision, announced on Twitter: transgender people won’t be allowed to serve in the military.

Why? He cites medical costs — but he’s just completely wrong. Medical costs for trans people are just — wait for it — 0.000001% of the military’s budget! Viagra costs the military 10x more than that. Viagra! It’s almost as if he pulled any reason whatsoever out of a hat before tweeting…

But Trump is notorious for changing his mind. Sign on now, and Avaaz will pull out all the stops to get Republicans, LGBT groups, military people, celebrities, conservatives and other influential figures onboard with us — together we could still change his mind:

As an American, I strongly urge you to allow transgender people to join the US military. Thousands of transgender people are eager to serve their country in this capacity, and we should proudly let them do so. We sincerely hope you will reconsider your decision.

1945 – A U.S. Army bomber crashed into the 79th floor of New York City’s Empire State Building. 14 people were killed and 26 were injured.

1951 – The Walt Disney film “Alice in Wonderland” was released.

1965 – U.S. President Johnson announced he was increasing the number of American troops in South Vietnam from 75,000 to 125,000.

1982 – San Francisco, CA, became the first city in the U.S. to ban handguns.

1994 – Kenny Rogers (Texas Rangers) pitched the 14th perfect game in major league baseball history.

1998 – Bell Atlantic and GTE announced $52 billion deal that created the second-largest phone company.

1998 – Serbian military forces seized the Kosovo town of Malisevo.

2006 – Researchers announced that two ancient reptiles had been found off Australia. The Umoonasaurus and Opallionectes were the first of their kind to be found in the period soon after the Jurassic era.

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The National Association of the Advancement of Colored People’s (NAACP) Silent Protest Parade, also known as the Silent March, was held in New York City on Saturday, July 28, 1917, on 5th Avenue. This parade came about because the violence acted upon African Americans, including the race riots, lynching, and outages in Texas, Tennessee, Illinois, and other states.

One incident in particular, the East St. Louis Race Riot, also called the East St. Louis Massacre, was a major catalyst of the silent parade. This horrific event drove close to six thousand blacks from their own burning homes and left several hundred dead.

James Weldon Johnson, the second vice president of the NAACP, brought together other civil rights leaders who gathered at St. Phillips Church in New York to plan protest strategies. None of the group wanted a mass protest, yet all agreed that a silent protest through the streets of the city could spark the idea of racial reform and an end to the violence. Johnson remembered the idea of a silent protest from A NAACP Conference in 1916 when Oswald Garrison Villard suggested it. All the organizations agreed that this parade needed to be comprised of the black citizens, rather than a racially-mixed gathering. They argued that as the principal victims of the violence, African Americans had a special responsibility to participate in this, the first major public protest of racial violence in U.S. history.

The parade went south down 5th Avenue, moved to 57th Street and then to Madison Square. It brought out nearly ten thousand black women, men, and children, who all marched in silence. Johnson urged that the only sound to be heard would be the “the sound of muffled drums.” Children, dressed in white, led the protest, followed by women behind, also dressed in white. Men followed at the rear, dressed in dark suits.

The marchers carried banners and posters stating their reasons for the march. Both participants and onlookers remarked that this protest was unlike any other seen in the city and the nation. There were no chants, no songs, just silence. As those participating in the parade continued down the streets of New York, black Boy Scouts handed out flyers to those watching that described the NAACP’s struggle against segregation, lynching, and discrimination, as well as other forms of racist oppression.

James Weldon Johnson wrote in his 1938 autobiography, Along This Way, that “the streets of New York have witnessed many strange sites, but I judge, never one stranger than this; among the watchers were those with tears in their eyes.”

Sources:
Jessie Carney Smith, Linda T. Wynn, Freedom Facts and Firsts: 400 Years of the African American Civil Rights Experience (Visible Ink Press, 2009); James Weldon Johnson, Along This Way: The Autobiography of James Weldon Johnson (New York: Penguin Classics, 2008); James Barron, “A History of Making Protest Messages Heard, Silently,” The New York Times (June 2012); “Snippet From History #2: The Negro Silent Protest of 1917,” http://www.usprisonculture.com/blog/2013/02/28/snippet-from-history-2-the-negro-silent-protest-of-1917/; “The Negro Silent Protest Parade,”

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You know Sandra Bland’s name. In the year after her well-publicized death, 815 people have died in jail awaiting trial. A third of them have died within the first three days of incarceration. Most were in jail for one reason only: They were too poor to pay bail. This reality is what terrified Tai Sherman’s mother, Tracey, and the reason she spent every dime she had – and a lot she didn’t – to get her daughter Tai out of jail.

Tai’s case is a classic example of what is wrong with money bail. Tai had no criminal record. She was arrested for driving away while a police officer was trying to arrest an acquaintance of hers for shoplifting $38 worth of stuff – dish soap and the like.

For this, Tai was slapped with $100,000 bail.

The good news is that money bail reform has a lot of momentum in California and has a good chance of happening this year – and Brave New Films has partnered with the Ella Baker Center and a number of other organizations to #EndMoneyBail this Summer in California.

And Brave New Films has even more work to share right now. In the coming weeks, we’ll be releasing “How Much Is Your Freedom Worth?”, a spoken word film that brings the injustice of the money bail system to verse. Next is “A Deal With the Devil” which showcases how defendants are compelled to take horribly unfair plea deals due to money bail. All of these films, plus our collaboration with Pretrial Justice Institute – “Breaking Down Bail“ – are available to screen now. All you have to do is organize a screening at your home, at your school, or with your faith community to see these films about this important issue. Please help us get the word out now about the movement to end money bail.

Thanks to the women in this room and people all across the country, we worked really hard — and it’s now been more than three years since Congress passed the Affordable Care Act and I signed it into law. It’s been nearly a year since the Supreme Court upheld the law under the Constitution. And, by the way, six months ago, the American people went to the polls and decided to keep going in this direction. So the law is here to stay.

I’ll do everything in my power to make sure nothing like this happens again by holding the responsible parties accountable, by putting in place new checks and new safeguards, and going forward, by making sure that the law is applied as it should be — in a fair and impartial way.

They exemplified the very idea of citizenship — that with our God-given rights come responsibilities and obligations to ourselves and to others. They embodied that idea. That’s the way they died. That’s how we must remember them. And that’s how we must live.